Climate Crisis

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my very able colleague, Congressman Casten, for the opportunity to join him and Congresswoman Castor, the leaders of this marvelous committee on climate change. I thank them very much for leading our country and world in this regard.

My goal as chair of the House Energy and Water Subcommittee is to help them and help our generation embrace a better future for those that will follow. We must sustain life on Earth. Let us all help our country and world meet the challenges as we face the dawn of this new climate change era.

The clean energy future of our Nation and our ability to reboot and reenergize the domestic manufacturing economy depends on climate- related infrastructure programs for inventing that new future. Addressing climate change will create and even bring back good paying jobs right here at home. Addressing climate change is our portal to sustain life on Earth for generations to come.

Headlines coast to coast, as others have referenced, tell part of the story. Yes, the Earth is warming. The rate of increase for damaging weather events is unrelenting. Each of us, and each of our districts, have personally experienced the impacts of this historic change. If we fail to address the hastening crisis, it is to our collective peril.

As a small first step, I would urge every American who may be listening to plant trees. Yes, everyone can do something. A first simple step is to plant a tree to capture the carbon that is already in the air, and the tree will produce oxygen to help you breathe, and to help your children breathe and your neighbors. It is amazing what happens.

Cleveland, Ohio, used to be known as ``forest city.'' We have a big job to do in replanting many of the trees that have aged-out over the years, and making Cleveland, and places like it, a much more oxygen- rich community.

Addressing climate change will help human health. As America stands at a crossroads in this new energy age, we must ensure that infrastructure includes strategic investments in energy, clean energy, climate, and water resources innovation.

Technologies and innovation driven by the Department of Energy are already helping to address climate change. They already have markedly driven down the cost of wind, solar, energy storage, and efficient lightbulbs by 60 to 95 percent just since 2008, and we are not done yet. They have led to widespread deployment and consumer savings.

New innovations will lead to new opportunities. In my own home region, I was very pleased to be at the birth of a company called First Solar, now the largest in the Nation, invented locally using cadmium- telluride technology. And now, just recently in the past month, First Solar has announced the hiring of an additional 500 new employees in good jobs to match the thousands they already employ, to meet an unmet market demand.

Reversing the impacts of climate change will create good paying jobs like these across every State in our country. Already there are more Americans working in energy efficiency and energy production than as waiters and waitresses. Think about that. That is in a very short time, and more jobs to come. We must continue to innovate and lead in these areas, so our Nation is not left behind. As people in communities succeed, so will America. As someone said to me, Marcy, what America makes, makes America. My, gosh, do I agree with that.

The Biden administration has been clear from day one about the need to urgently address the climate crisis, and I am excited that the President's American Jobs Plan will create new jobs by reinvesting in areas and workers too often left behind, and they will help save our planet and sustain all of us and those who will follow us.

We cannot lose sight of the importance of including climate-related and job-creating proposals in any infrastructure package. In fact, any package that aims to build back better must do that. Climate change can be addressed by every community across our country. Innovation, intelligence, and environmental patriotism should drive this new national imperative.

As we watch President Joe Biden in his foreign trip meet the leaders of democracies across Europe this week, we watch America lead these democracies of the world in protecting Mother Earth for those who will follow us.

It really is a daunting time, but it is also an inspiring time. And any time America has ever set a goal, it has always achieved it.

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